I know we often do not see eye-to-eye, AI, but I could not agree more this time.

The protests were needed, BUT NOT NOW!  Why not before the outbreak,?  There were plenty of police brutality cases to complain about back then too.

Why not wear masks?  The logic of wearing them is inescapable.  Even social distancing is possible for protestors in person, Glasgow residents managed it!

But why not stay home?  Avoid the riots, arrests, contagion.  Complain by email. online petition, videos on youtube!  Argue the case on sites like this one.  Go vote for a less colour prejudiced President, with a less brutal approach to rule.

This disease itself is racist!  It picks on BAME peoples more than caucasians.  So for every George Floyd saved by these protests, thousands more are at risk of dying, at risk of being unable to breathe for 8 weeks or more; not just 8 minutes.  George Floyd deserved better, much better, but so do all those who will die of covid19.  Don't kill the very people you are trying to save!

Technophobe wrote: The protests were needed, BUT NOT NOW!  Why not before the outbreak,?  There were plenty of police brutality cases to complain about back then too.

You have to strike while the iron's hot. If the protestors hadn't acted straight away you can bet that those police officers would not have been charged with murder. Timings in life are often inconvenient but that's life for you.

 I can see the risk factor, disease wise, and I'm quite sure there'll be a rash of cases as a result, and it would have perhaps been largely avoided if they had all worn masks but since a huge swathe of America was previously protesting against the wearing of masks, I think a second wave was heading there anyway.

1. 
   

He wasn't

 DUI,

 he was asleep, they had to wake him.....in a carpark ......

(I've done the Same thing, slept in my car.....)

he was fully complying with the officer,up until the point they tried to cuff him, 

Very bad policing, 

should have let him so as he ask and let him walk home or call a cab....

Total MURDER.....AGAIN

carbon20 wrote: He wasn't  DUI,  he was asleep, they had to wake him.....in a carpark ...... (I've done the Same thing, slept in my car.....) he was fully complying with the officer,up until the point they tried to cuff him,  Very bad policing,  should have let him so as he ask and let him walk home or call a cab.... Total MURDER.....AGAIN

You haven't seen the video he was drunk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnRuWcgflaE

 Good policing, bad behavior and choices on his part bad outcome all around for everyone. 

AI wrote: US police have 375 million encounters with civilians a year They killed 1004 people last year. 235 of these were black. 226 of the black fatalities were armed (96%) 9 unarmed blacks & 19 unarmed whites were killed by US police last year, out of a population of 330 million The 9 represent 0.1% of 7,407 black murder victims last year (in most years circa 90% of black victims are killed by black perpetrators). A US police officer (of any race) is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is by a police officer. Black deaths= 23% of people killed by police in 2019. The black proportion of the US population= 13%. Police interact most closely with the population of offenders. 53% of recorded murders & 60% of robberies were committed by black perpetrators according to recent figures. Let me make this clear. ANY lives lost as a result of malevolent police officers drunk on power are tragedies, & the perpetrators (including those in the local police branch who may have allowed this malpractice) MUST face justice. However: Does this mean all police officers are racist? Does this mean all police branches are corrupt? Does this mean the US is a white supremacist nation? Does this mean its OK to loot & burn homes, businesses, and places of worship in protest? OFC many of the protests ARE peaceful & many police & politicians are acting disproportionately in their response. But the situation in terms of rhetoric has gotten completely out of hand, & completely ignoring reality helps absolutely no one- including black communities. Decent people must stand up to racism, bigotry & corruption whenever they come across it. But peddling outright myths in order to add fuel to the fire and attack your political "enemies" is a mistake.

I may be the only member of this forum to have seen Chicago police officers shoot and kill a suspect.  He had it coming, he had a firearm and opened fire first.  Fair game.  

Your statistics are factual, and the number one cause of death of a police officer is being shot with his/her own firearm.  This was a stupid situation, the police officers did a poor job.....the guy was asleep in his car for God's sake, no reason for them to brutalize him.  

However, when he turned and fired back on the police with the Taser he took, he signed his own death warrant.  The police only saw the suspect turning and aiming something, and they aren't the Lone Ranger....they can't fire magic bullets that knock the weapon out of the bad guy's hand.  From what I've seen, I'd say that the officer was justified in opening fire.  A tragic case.  

This video will show you how badly these situations can go off the rail.  The woman officer's screams are quite chilling, she was very lucky to get out of this with her life.  The perp who got shot?  Good riddance.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgcZqasurE0

I wouldn't be a cop for any amount of money.

They do a S..t job

But we all call for one when we need one.

The whole incident was handled badly,

Why the cuffs? 

Why try to run?( could get stitched up some other crime)  

Better training,

Better relations between cops and communities.....

Your problem....USA

Our cops not perfect ,

We have too many deaths in custody,

And wrongful  imprisonments.........

WitchMisspelled wrote: For what it's worth, NYC and New York on the whole has seen 21 days of protesting .  With very few exceptions, everyone wore face coverings.  The infection rates are still dropping.  Unless something changes drastically in the next seven days, if protesters are wearing masks and are out of doors, there's no indication that protesting means higher infection rates. As a side note, 14 police and national guard has tested positive here in NY the last time I checked.  None of them were wearing masks.  The protesters are actually complaining that they could be infected and the police and national guard need to be required to wear masks.

De Blasio Tells Covid Contract Tracers Not to Ask Positive Cases If They’ve Attended BLM Protests

New York City’s coronavirus contact-tracing force are not asking those who test positive for COVID-19 whether they recently attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration, a city spokesperson confirmed.

“No person will be asked proactively if they attended a protest,” Avery Cohen, a spokesperson for de Blasio, told THE CITY about the directive. “If a person wants to proactively offer that information, there is an opportunity for them to do so.”

De Blasio, who announced his program last month to hire 1,000 “contact tracers,” has promised to reveal Monday how many city residents have been questioned so far.

Tracers are supposed to ask those who test positive for Covid-19 to “recall ‘contacts’ and individuals they may have exposed,” Cohen explained. Tracers also probe for any “close contacts” of the patient — anyone that has been within six feet of the infected person for at least 10 minutes.

 “Let’s be clear about something: if there is a spike in coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, don’t blame the protesters. Blame racism,” Mark Levine, head of the city council’s health committee, tweeted earlier this month.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/blasio-tells-covid-contract-tracers-134316096.html

Guess it's not pertinent information how, when or where potential transmission occurred. LOL  And contract tracing in NYC is pretty much useless due to the protests causing missing links in the transmission chain. You can't fix stupid but you can try to rationalize and justify it and look that's exactly what's happening.

HE WAS NOT SLEEPING IN HIS CAR WHEN THEY PULLED UP...HE PASSED OUT IN THE DRIVE THRU AT WENDY'S AND HELD UP ALL THE CARS BEHIND HIM...THAT IS WHY WENDY'S CALLED THE COPS.

I keep seeing he was sleeping it off in the parking lot...that is NOT true.

CRS, DrPH wrote: carbon20 wrote: I wouldn't be a cop for any amount of money. They do a S..t job But we all call for one when we need one. The whole incident was handled badly, Why the cuffs?  Why try to run?( could get stitched up some other crime)   Better training, Better relations between cops and communities..... Your problem....USA Our cops not perfect , We have too many deaths in custody, And wrongful  imprisonments......... 100% correct, Carbon.  Our cops are mostly white and, for some reason, terrified of African-American men.  Their first instinct is to grab the sidearm.  Police used to carry 6-shooter revolvers, but now they are all armed with military-grade 9 mm or 10 mm automatic handguns that carry 13 rounds of ammo (or more).   The influence of military tactics and weapons in US law enforcement leads to this aggressive "respond with force first" posture.   However, America is awash with guns and the bad guys have the same military-strength armaments, so it is literally war on our streets, every day.  Scary for the boys and girls in blue. I train with the second largest police department in IL (Aurora, IL) and am firearms trained by the FBI.  I don't cotton to crappy law enforcement.  These officers had no right to be so rough on a civilian whose only crime was to be drunk and passed out in a car, but they never know what they are going to find.  Please watch this for a frightening portrayal of a sleeping-guy in a car bust gone bad.  (the suspect in this video was on the run from murder, he got what he deserved).   https://youtu.be/4H93P3rEWRM

Actually 27% of the police in the US are minorities and of that 27% of minority officers, 12% are black police officers and blacks represent 13% of the US population. Hardly mainly white.

And race has little to do with use of force among police.

In 2013, racial or ethnic minorities comprised 27 percent of local police officers, the Bureau of Justice Statistics(BJS) reported Thursday morning.( Given the data is 7 years old I would highly suspect that the % of officers that are a minority is higher now than 27% as stated as of 2013)

Several experts interviewed by Newsweek said the increased diversity doesn't necessarily mean relations between police and communities of color are more amicable.

Alex S. Vitale, associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, told Newsweek that black and white officers "aren't really different" in terms of reports of excessive use of force and arrests. Some research even suggests "black officers are more likely to make arrests of black suspects than their white counterparts are in the same circumstances."

"The overarching reality is that these officers are part of an institution that has very clear expectations and demands and they respond to the demands in the way that white officers do," he says. "Black communities often express a desire to have police officers that match the demographics of the community, but when communities are surveyed about their satisfaction with the police, communities with more diverse police forces don't report higher satisfaction."

"This is, in my opinion, a total canard," he adds. "It's maybe important from an employment standpoint, but it's not going to make any difference in terms of the profound problems of over-policing and excessive use of force."

The Washington Post has written on several studies detailing the link between police diversity and community relations. Lydia DePillis noted that a 2004 analysis of data from St. Petersburg, Florida and Indianapolis, Indiana concluded "black officers are more likely to conduct coercive actions" than their white colleagues when resolving conflicts. DePillis also references a 2006 analysis of Cincinnati Police Department records; in her words, the study found "white officers were more likely to arrest suspects than black officers overall—but it also found that black officers were significantly more likely to make an arrest when the suspect was black."

Moreover, she writes that a 2011 Washington Post poll found that black residents rated the police department at a "relatively low 60 percent" even though "the force is highly integrated." She also notes: "The New York Police Department's demographics are close to those of the rest of the city, but a Quinnipiac poll from 2014 found that only 54 percent of black residents approved of its performance. The Detroit police department is so dominated by African Americans that it's been sued for discrimination against whites, and yet only 18 percent of black Wayne County residents approved of its work in 2009."

https://www.newsweek.com/racial-makeup-police-departments-331130

Asleep? Passed out in the drive through, blocking other customers. If he was passed out in the parking lot, some of the employees would've messed with his car, for giggles and grins after close.

Since the dining room is all but shut down because of the coof, the drive-through is their lifeline.

And he shut it down.

'Course, it was an Antifa white girl that torched the black-owned franchise.

Tabitha111 wrote: HE WAS NOT SLEEPING IN HIS CAR WHEN THEY PULLED UP...HE PASSED OUT IN THE DRIVE THRU AT WENDY'S AND HELD UP ALL THE CARS BEHIND HIM...THAT IS WHY WENDY'S CALLED THE COPS. I keep seeing he was sleeping it off in the parking lot...that is NOT true.

You are correct, Tabitha, he was passed out.  My point was, he was not driving, therefore was not DUI.  Now as to whether he was preventing people from using the drive-thru, the 911 caller, who was an an employee, said that the other cars were driving around him.  She wanted the cops to come for the driver's safety, to get the car out of the way, yes, but also because she was afraid he would injure someone or himself getting the car to safety in the parking lot.  

ViQueen24 wrote: Tabitha111 wrote: HE WAS NOT SLEEPING IN HIS CAR WHEN THEY PULLED UP...HE PASSED OUT IN THE DRIVE THRU AT WENDY'S AND HELD UP ALL THE CARS BEHIND HIM...THAT IS WHY WENDY'S CALLED THE COPS. I keep seeing he was sleeping it off in the parking lot...that is NOT true. You are correct, Tabitha, he was passed out.  My point was, he was not driving, therefore was not DUI.

Actually yes that was DUI according to Georgia state law. He was in control of a motor vehicle while intoxicated above the legal limit of .08. How did the car just magically appear in the drive through lane? He drove there drunk is how. Drunk driving kills 10,000 people per year in the US. Most of them are not the drunk driver but rather innocent people.

carbon20 wrote: so that's OK then shooting a man in the back for being  DUI , strangling for having a dodgy $$ bill....... YOUR  A  VERY SICK COUNTRY AMERICA...... VERY SICK.....

No, and no.  And, no question, this is a sick society. 

Our police have become very militarized.  Part of the reason is the massive influx of military-style weaponry into the hands of citizens and bad guys.  In the past, our police had to worry about a bad guy pulling out a switchblade knife or other low-intensity weapon.  Now, they must be prepared to face a fusillade of bullets from Glock, Sig Sauer or other makers of military arms. 

The officer should have let the perp run, but the perp did turn to fire on the police.  In my training, that is grounds to open fire upon the perp.  The officer couldn't tell if the perp had a Taser stun gun, or deadlier weapon (which is entirely possible). 

I know officers who have faced gunfire in running fights like that, your pulse is at maximum and your thinking is a fog.  Perhaps the officer should have let him go, and I think I would have if I were involved.  

I may be the only poster on AFT who has both seen police shoot and kill a perp (he fired first, fair game in Chicago) and used a handgun in defense of my own life.  It ain't cut and dried. 

I posted video of the arrest. It all went well until the freak-out when the officer tried to cuff Reyshard.

Let him go? He blew way above the legal limit in Georgia after being caught passed out in the Wendy's drive-thru, tried to bull***t the cops, and then resisted arrest, stole a weapon, fired that weapon on them, and was killed by justified deadly force.

You're in Chiraq, right?

Bat AIDS wrote: I posted video of the arrest. It all went well until the freak-out when the officer tried to cuff Reyshard. Let him go? He blew way above the legal limit in Georgia after being caught passed out in the Wendy's drive-thru, tried to bull***t the cops, and then resisted arrest, stole a weapon, fired that weapon on them, and was killed by justified deadly force. You're in Chiraq, right?

They had his identity, and should have had more cruisers in the neighborhood to snare him.  Shooting him didn't turn out very well, did it? 

I used to live in Chiraq, but now live close to the Mexican border in Arizona.   Chicago police used to be notorious for killing a perp who fired on the PD, and as far as I know, that is still the custom. 

I prefer the feds, these are friends of mine.  FBI SWAT, best law enforcement I ever met.   Here they are showing off the targets of hostage-taking perps that they shot in the head while running at full tilt, after being dropped out of a chopper or jumping out of a Chevy Blazer.  Amazing display. 

They knew who he was.  They knew where he lived.  A drunk freaking out?  There's a surprise.  He grabbed the taser, but ran away.  Where did the cop's training come in that a drunk guy could grab his taser?  Then, they shot him in the back as he was running away.

Is anyone seriously trying to tell me the cops acted appropriately by shooting a man in the back that was running away over a DUI (okay and theft of a taser) when they could have towed the car and picked him up at home a few hours later?  A taser isn't a deadly weapon.  He was probably so drunk and upset that if he tased anyone it would be himself.  Besides, where was the other cop's taser?

Seriously...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/17/rayshard-brooks-garrett-rolfe-atlanta-officer-charged-felony-murder-assault/3196723001/

It should be noted that Officer Brosnan will be testifying for the state of Georgia.  When the videotape of the press conference surfaces on YouTube, etc., for those who did not see it, it is well worth a half hour to have the full extent of charges against the officers and pictures associated with the reasoning for those charges laid bare.

BBC News - Rayshard Brooks shooting: US policeman faces murder charge

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53084232

I train with, and instruct, police and federal officers.  These things are not always cut & dried.  Please watch this video.....the policewoman uses all of the "kinder, gentler" police techniques = "How ya doing?  Whatcha doing out here?" etc.  

She doesn't know that this guy is a fugitive murderer on the run, and heavily armed.  When he saw his chance, he moved.  If her backup officer hadn't shown up and shot the perp, this would have had a different outcome. 

Making an arrest involving a car is heart-stopping in today's police work.  Many times, perps will come out of the back seat or even the trunk (boot) and ambush the arresting officer.  I've seen videos of this.  

This arrest in Atlanta was badly handled by the officers, and they should have let the perp run.   The police had his identity and vehicle, he would have been arrested soon and, instead of facing a relatively minor DUI, he'd be facing serious felony charges of resisting arrest etc.   

Police should not have shot him, but they did.  I expect that they will be found "not guilty" of homicide and that the jury will find the shooting justified, given that the perp turned and shot something at a pursuing officer.  I don't like it, but it is war on the streets. 

https://youtu.be/4H93P3rEWRM

Here's some more footage of a car arrest gone bad.  This stuff happens all the time.  

https://youtu.be/GKgOTzBypEk

Well you'd think you would be way more concerned about something that is much more likely to happen than being killed by a police officer. 

Homicide ranks No. 1 as the leading cause of death for African American males ages 1 to 44, and fourth leading cause for African American males for all ages.

https://www.gainesville.com/news/20200617/homicide-is-leading-cause-of-death-of-black-males-age-44-and-younger-in-us

 And it's not the cops or white folks killing them, it's black on black violence.

AI wrote: Well you'd think you would be way more concerned about something that is much more likely to happen than being killed by a police officer.  Homicide ranks No. 1 as the leading cause of death for African American males ages 1 to 44, and fourth leading cause for African American males for all ages. https://www.gainesville.com/news/20200617/homicide-is-leading-cause-of-death-of-black-males-age-44-and-younger-in-us  And it's not the cops or white folks killing them, it's black on black violence. 9 unarmed blacks & 19 unarmed whites were killed by US police last year, out of a population of 330 million The 9 represent 0.1% of 7,407 black murder victims last year (in most years circa 90% of black victims are killed by black perpetrators). Have you ever been to a black on black violence protest?

This is trash.  Whites kills whites in far greater numbers than blacks kill blacks.  That is sensationalized BS. 

I was faculty at Malcolm X College in Chicago some years ago, and the Chicago black community is well aware of the threats to their children and residents.   A much bigger problem in their community is victimization of young girls by older males, resulting in pregnancy at a very young age = "babies having babies" is what they call it. 

I can completely understand why the black and colored communities do not engage with police.  When called, the police do not respond appropriately, they are VERY racist (I say this a guy carrying an FBI card) and interactions between white police and black residents almost never goes off well. 

I've even had Chicago police sass me to my face.  I lived in this west side building in the 1970s, and came back with a grad school girlfriend in the early evening.  When we got to the foyer, we saw 4 or 5 white Chicago cops, with riot shotguns and handguns, leaving the building.  I politely asked what was going on, and one of the cops just said "Nuttin" in his best Chicago tough-guy cop TV voice.  

I blew up, and said "NUTTIN??  You guys are putting away shotguns and you say NUTTIN??"  The top cop of the bunch saw how pissed off I was and came over, he said "Look, a guy got shot in Blackies (nearby bar), somebody thought he ran over here, we checked and he ain't here."  

Upstairs, I told my girl to stay put, got my revolver (Charter Arms Bulldog, .44 Special) and flashlight, and checked areas that the cops wouldn't know existed, including the basement/boiler room, back stairway and roof.  I didn't find anything, but in about an hour, an ambulance with a bunch of cop cars came roaring up.....the wounded perp was in the 3rd flood apartment in the back, and he was bleeding so badly that the family had to call for an ambulance.  

So much for the police, my friend.  I don't trust them either.